Informal Work in India: A Tale of Two Definitions

Training poverty in India: Reassessing the effect of social ascription

“…These issues are addressed by the institutional explanation of gender bias in human capital acquisition (Dämmrich & Blossfeld, 2017). In line with the concept, we expect females to be more presented in the organised sectors and thus be more likely to participate in formal training schemes, as predicted by Sheikh and Gaurav (2020).…”

“…The latter might be a consequence of the traditional segregation of roles partly inherited through the ascriptive aspects of social relationships. On the other hand, women may prefer to work in the organised sector because it usually offers provisions, such as childcare and maternity leave, unlike in the informal sector (Sheikh & Gaurav, 2020). This impact is also channelled through formal institutional arrangements that foster schemas targeting female employment (Dämmrich & Blossfeld, 2017), particularly in non‐manual occupations in service sectors that are more likely to require formal vocational training.…”

“…Many jobs hardly require any investments in human capital, and this may negatively affect the intentions of workers to improve their skills. The informal sector is a major employer in India, even in urban areas (Sheikh & Gaurav, 2020), which retain wide range of informal learning activities (Regel & Pilz, 2019). In non‐agricultural sectors, informal employment rose 13 per cent in response to the reforms of the 1990s, and remained very high, reaching 83.6 per cent at one point (see Table 1).…”

“…India has become a country where high‐qualified jobs in skills‐intensive enterprises coexist with a vast army of low‐paid, unskilled workers in agriculture and construction (Agrawal, 2012). From this perspective, disadvantaged ‘ascriptive inequalities’ (Grusky, 2001; Li & Wang, 2013; Linton, 1936; Nock & Rossi, 1978), associated with inherited statuses, such as lower castes, are still significant determinants of informal employment (Sheikh & Gaurav, 2020) and vocational training (Kumar et al, 2019). It is also believed that females are less likely to be formally trained than males.…”

“…We argue that these effects are somewhat exaggerated for the Indian salariat; moreover, these effects turn to be even positive while controlling for job‐specific parameters indicating a position of an individual in organised sectors, given the multi‐layered diversity of the Indian population at the level of occupations, households and states. The rationale for this reassessment stems for the recent estimates, according to which the organised sector in India is less affected by traditionalism (Sheikh & Gaurav, 2020).…”